A Healthy Alternative to Work

Back in action. It’s been a crazy weekend, folks. I saw probably the best high school football game since Varsity Blues on Friday night, as Ohio County lost to the Fort Knox Eagles. Tied at 20, Knox snagged an interception late in the fourth quarter, and scored on a fake field goal attempt with seconds to go. Best of all, senior quarterback Michael Reddick made the call to run the fake-out on the field, overriding coach Tom Jaco’s call for the play.

The win also means I went 8-0 on picks for last week, putting me at least two points ahead of the rest of the pack. It has occurred to me that gambling might be what I need to get into.

I was out yesterday on guard duty, counting the six rounds in my magazine over and over and reading Coyote Blue by Christopher Moore.

Anyway, it’s apparent that my last post went over like a wet fart in the Politics section, so I take it everyone’s AOK with calling each other names. Once I get up to speed on what’s going on, I’ll be back at it.

-30-

Politics is just another bullshit world where 'my esteemed colleague' means 'this asshole here.'
-- Dennis Miller

A lot of political writing - on tBlog and elsewhere - can be characterized as violent. I saw a lot of left-leaning writers almost beside themselves with glee after Dick Cheney's use of vulgarity (and suggestion to perform an anatomical impossibility). But Cheney's droppage of the F-bomb only puts him at about the level that "political debate" in the blogosphere runs on.

I'm not going to be partisan here, and anyone who takes the time to read this shouldn't immediately assume that I'm going after people who affiliate themselves with a certain party or ideology - unless that ideology happens to be outright viciousness.

That said, I think there is room for some viciousness in political writing -- it certainly served (and continues to serve) one of my idols, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, well, and in a lot of cases it's more fun to read than your standard AP-Style pablum.

But the name-calling is getting out of hand. If someone happens to land on the other side of the political fence from me, it would be wrong for me to dismiss him by off-handedly calling him a moron or pinko commie (although I have used the latter, since it's a funny word, and I don't think anyone could really take that all that seriously).

I'm sure I'm as guilty as the next guy, but for the record, if I've been a jerk, I apologize. Here's a white freakin' flag.

So, for anyone out there who reads and posts in the politics section happens to read this entry - and not just the headline - let's step it down a bit. We can agree to disagree, and once that happens we might be able to exchange ideas more along the lines of the way that diplomats do... and less like the way Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid might have.

-30-

Saw this in another blog today:

"In the "missing the point completely" department, everyone's focused on the potential for medals and forgetting that for the first time since 1968, Iraqi Olympians will not be tortured for losing."

Ain't that something?

-30-

Don't get scared off by the fact that this article is by National Review's Jonah Goldberg. It's a great take on this swift boat nonsense and the surrounding debate.

Highlights:

"[A] few years ago it was reported that then-Senator Bob Kerrey may have done some bad things in Vietnam. Instantaneously, defenders exclaimed, "Unless you were there, you have no right to judge." Now, while I thought Kerrey deserved the benefit of the doubt, and the self-righteousness of anti-war liberals bothers me no matter what the circumstances, as a matter of first principles I thought this argument was nonsense.

"After all, in many important spheres of life proximity to or participation in events is a disqualification for objectivity. If you are an eyewitness to a crime — never mind a victim of it — there's no way you could be put on an impartial jury charged with "judging" a defendant. What defense lawyer would welcome having the presiding judge also play the dual role of prosecutor? For instance, none of the jurors in the Abu Ghraib courts martial are prison guards at Abu Ghraib, and rightly so. ...

"As for the president, the only area in which he beats John Kerry decisively in the polls is, broadly, in his capacity as commander-in-chief. The American people — as well as a majority of veterans and (I presume) those serving in the military — generally think Bush is a better war president than Kerry would be. And yet the Kerry campaign insists that Kerry's stint in Vietnam makes him more qualified to be a war president because George W. Bush's four-year term as a war president cannot outweigh the fact that John Kerry spent four months in Vietnam. Meanwhile a bunch of guys who served alongside Kerry under similar circumstances all say that Kerry's full of it, and the Democrats say they have no right to talk at all. Indeed, they want the book pulled from bookstores. Follow all of that?

"Now, keep in mind this is all largely a reversal from twelve years ago when Bill Clinton ran for office. Back then the Paul Begalas and John Kerrys claimed that service in Vietnam — or anywhere else — was irrelevant to being an effective president (while some Republicans were largely saying the reverse). Now, suddenly, it is the qualification that trumps all others. ...

"... If service in Vietnam or in uniform were the prerequisite for correct thinking on military and foreign-policy issues, then you'd think Veterans would all agree with each other. Obviously, they don't. The media's favorite veteran, John McCain, disagrees with John Kerry about Iraq and most foreign-policy issues (depending on which day of the week Kerry is talking). John Edwards talks about how Kerry still carries shrapnel in his leg and therefore...therefore...therefore, well, something along the lines of nobody's ever allowed to criticize John Kerry. Obviously, that's idiotic on its face."

I'd encourage everyone to read the article, and gain some perspective on this exercise in absurdity.

-30-

I don't care what the subject of the fanaticism is. It could be Christianity, the Republican or Democratic party, Kerry, KISS, plagiarized tBlog posts, Islam, heroin, or what have you, if you are a fanatic of any type, kindly leave. And try not to reproduce.

Thanks.

-30-

Okay, look. I've just about had it with this Swift Boat nonsense.

But Michael Novak, of NRO, has a few valid points to bring up about the so-called Swift Boat Vets and their book, Unfit for Command. Regardless of whether there was enemy fire or not, of whose boat hit what mine, and where Kerry went after his medaled action, there's no denying that the man betrayed those who he'd served with.

I don't understand the sheer determination some folks have to cling on to Kerry's campaign version of his Vietnam service and simultaneous off-handed dismissal of the Swift Boat Vets as Bush-bribed goons. They were there too -- and were there long after Lieutenant John Kerry left with his three Purple Hearts.

The Kerry campaign has collectively backed off of his old "Christmas in Cambodia" story -- which has always been a steaming pile of horse nuggets. The important part of the Cambodian Christmas story is that Kerry "remembers" hearing Richard Nixon say that there were no American troops in Cambodia -- but there, he claims, he was.

Well, he wasn't. He was something like 55 miles away on Christmas, and the time he did go to Cambodia, well, old Dick wasn't president yet.

These facts having come to light, Kerry's campaign has admitted he was maybe a little off on this story... reminds me a bit of "Big Fish," actually.

Certain folks, however, are committed to trumpeting both Kerry's "war heroism" and the supposed sleaziness of the Swift Boat Vets.

Kerry's trying to avoid it, guys... can we drop it now and get to the actual issues?

-30-

I might be out on a limb here, but I’m going to go ahead and guess that it has a lot more to do with the beach volleyball “uniforms” than anything else.
Personally, I’ve taken some inspiration from Paul Hamm. I figure, if I can nearly demolish the judging stand and still walk away with the gold, I’ll be able to do anything I set my mind to.

-30-

Isn't the most insulting thing you can do to someone is have no expectations of them at all?
-- Dennis Miller

I don't really have much to talk about at the moment. A quick browse through CNN's website shows that we've finally decided to quit playing sniper hide-and-seek in Najaf, which I'm pretty relieved to hear. Why is it OK for militants to hide inside a supposedly holy mosque, armed to the teeth, and not OK for us to go after them? As soon as a bullet is fired out of a mosque (or hospital, or school, or what have you), it ceases to be a mosque and becomes a military target. It should be that simple.

Yammerings continue over the supposed "issue" of Senator John Kerry's Vietnam record. Look, guys, I know that since we stopped talking about real issues, there's been a bit of a dearth in terms of stuff to discuss, but let's drop this one, OK? As far as I'm concerned, here's the story: John Kerry served as a lower officer aboard something called a "swift boat" during Vietnam. When he got back (after a curtailed tour during which he earned three Purple Hearts), he testified before some sort of committee that he - and everyone involved in the Vietnam War - had committed "war crimes." Then he chucked his medals over a fence someplace.

That's good enough for me. I don't see how some guy who served with him on his swift boat team 30 years ago is in any way qualified to tell us whether or not Kerry's fit to be president. I'm sticking with Kerry's own - well, his first, anyway - account of his service. The real question is how does it have any bearing whatsoever on his candidacy? People are howling over George W. Bush's supposedly AWOL period in the Texas Air National Guard. What? Didn't we recently reelect a guy who had dodged the draft to go smoke pot in Canada? Clearly, military service doesn't really mean squat.

And here I'll repeat an admonition I made earlier: If John Kerry becomes president, the war is not going to go away. Whoever the Commander-in-Chief is, we're going to be in Iraq for a long, long time. We're still in Kosovo. Hell, we're still in Korea and Germany.

That reminds me. This grandstanding over the announced troop realignment is pure and utter nonsense. It's been in the works for years. They were talking about it in very specific terms when I got to Korea over a year ago, i.e., which bases would be closed down, negotiations with the Republic of Korea for the land for two new bases south of Seoul, and overall Eight Army reorganization. "Sends the wrong message," old Wes Clark says. Are you kidding me? Are we really supposed to take this guy seriously? We've been sending that message for about two years now.

I suppose he's counting on the fact that countless Americans are unaware of that fact, and that most will be uninclined to look any further into the issue. For the record, President Bush didn't just come up with this to boost election ratings.

I suppose that's enough ranting for a bit. Mahalo.

-30-

P.S: That headline is designed to get the attention of certain folks who post routinely in the Politics section. I have a theory about them I'm trying to prove. We'll see if it bears out.

Well Hanson did it Hester
and Mark David did it to John
and maybe Jack did it to Marilyn
but he did it to South Vietnam.

  -- Bad Religion, “Don’t Pray on Me”

I’m not a fan of reductionism when it comes to politics, because it’s a very nuanced and complicated field. All the angles have to be accounted for. But when Sen. John Kerry backs President Bush’s troop realignment plan three weeks ago, then addresses the VFW and criticizes the decision after it’s announced, it’s tough not to slip into a refrain of “You’ve got more waffles than a House of Pancakes.”

Seriously though, I had a conversation with an old college buddy (BroSputnik) who’s living in Frisco now. In school, he set himself apart from the rather conservative society by being a rabid communist and social liberal (strangely enough, he was also a staunch supporter of Israel, and wondered aloud several times as how a non-Israeli might go about joining the Israeli military).

Now, Sputnik and I are at adamant odds on most things, but we do agree on one issue: politics is much too nuanced to be described by little jingles like “Bush is a moron” and “Kerry is a flip-flopper.” There’s much more to it.

Like history, for instance. You really can’t get a good grip on the Iraq issue without historical context. Iraq is really just an arbitrary amalgamation of three countries (who happen to despise each other) that was defined during the global power-grabbing that went on after the First World War.

Anyway, be that as it may, I’m sure I’ll be called a stupid Nazi by some other enlightened tBlogger by the time I check my comments on Monday.

In other news (hah), the Turret’s Picks-4-Kicks season is getting moving. That means editor Larry picks about ten football games (five college, five high school), and a roster of lucky pickers (including the sports editor, i.e., me) predict the outcomes. Scores are added up and the winner gets bragging rights when the thing ends after the NCAA basketball finals.

If you’ve been reading this nonsense for any amount of time, you’ve probably picked up on the fact that I’m much more interested in Iran-Contra than in, say, the Big Ten.

But it should make for an interesting fall through spring. My company commander – a pixie-like woman who isn’t five feet high – is one of the pickers. Hopefully that’ll get me some points at the company.

-30-

I may have mentioned that a few days ago I went and shot a Purple Heart ceremony hosted by Knox MEDDAC. Well, last night, I ran into a few of the awardees at the Rocker II club here.

The seven awarded the Purple Heart were all National Guardsmen and reservists, and they’re sitting here at the Medical Holdover Company recovering from their wounds and getting treatment. I was excited to talk to them and ask how their experiences had shaped their view of the “strategic” situation.

“Are you upset that you went to war and were wounded over what a lot of people now are calling a lie?” I asked. “America sent you over there because of weapons of mass destruction, and now it seems that there are no weapons of mass destruction.”

“My ass,” said a senior sergeant after a swig of beer. “We got hit with Sarin mortars pretty hard."

It turned out that most of the soldiers had been injured in a convoy moving north of Baghdad. One estimated that about 700 hostile fighters had been firing at them. One specialist I talked to was manning an M-249 SAW in an armored “box” mounted on a Humvee, and had taken an AK-47 round in the back – dead center on his right lung. The bullet penetrated his ballistic vest, but it stopped short of entering his body.

“They’ve got a photo of my vest and the welt on my back posted up at all the med stations out there now,” he said. “It has a caption that says ‘WEAR YOUR VEST.’”

The unit had also been hit with chemical weapons. They got the order to pull on their protective masks, but not before several had noticed a burning sensation in their eyes and throats.

I asked what they think we need to do, whether it was sending more troops, pulling out, or changing our strategy.

“They need to stop tying our damn hands,” the specialist said. “The whole time you’re over there they tell you, ‘If you shoot the wrong guy, you go to prison. If you fire your weapon prematurely, you go to prison.’ They constantly drum that into your head, and everyone’s terrified of shooting anything.”

How can you tell who the right guy to shoot is?

“You can’t. It could be anyone.”

 -30-

Welcome to Tuesdays at The Turret. On Tuesdays, guys like Salemonz and I try to cobble this weekly newspaper together.

Here's my desk. Note the chaos in the right corner, and the weird smattering of reading material. On the desk, next to the computer, are dummy sheets, which have been filled out to outline the sports section this week. The ruler, in the arcane jargon of journalism, is called a "pica pole," because picas are creatures that measure newspaper page widths.

This here is Salemonz. He is chewing on a pen while he listens to an interview he conducted about prostate cancer. Full of cheery stories, this guy is. He's a bit neater than I am, but that's only because I'm the sports editor and sports desks are supposed to be filled with chaos.


-30-

I had Charge of Quarters duty last night. That means I got to sit in the barracks day room and watch TV from 1800 yesterday to 0600 this morning -- cushy CQ, by any standard, except that since today is crunch day at The Turret, I don't get the usual day off. So here I am, pounding my way through another sports section.

Last night I saw exerpts from a Paula Zahn interview with retired General Tommy Franks, whose new book is causing waves in the "Bush Lied" camp. After watching Michael Moore and Bill O'Reilly duke it out over the question "did Bush deliberately lie to mislead our country into war," I thought Franks' candor about the subject was pretty admirable.

He basically took responsibility for the much-maligned presidential landing on an aircraft carrier -- which, as you no doubt recall, was accompanied by a large "Mission Accomplished!" banner. This has been fuel for Bush-haters for quite some time now... actually, come to think of it, since Fahrenheit 9/11 came out.

National Review's Rich Lowry takes a look at Franks, his book, and the "bad intelligence fiasco" in this article here.

Here are a couple highlights for those not inclined to click the link:

 ' Franks recounts a meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan in January 2003. Abdullah told Franks, "General, from reliable intelligence sources, I believe the Iraqis are hiding chemical and biological weapons." Perhaps Abdullah, an opponent of Saddam, wanted to bait us into invading Iraq — and so presumably "Abdullah lied." ...

The real liar in all this, of course, is Saddam Hussein, who didn't come clean about his weapons programs in what was likely an effort at strategic deception to cow his opponents at home and deter his enemies abroad. Any moral opprobrium about the Iraq War should attach to him, not the men who tried their best to deal responsibly with him and his regime — even if one of those men happens to be a Republican president of the United States.'

So there's that angle.

In other news, Mike Francis of Newhouse News Service reported in an article that appeared in the Aug. 23 edition of Army Times that a National Guardsman (2nd Battalion, 162nd Infantry Regiment) deployed to Iraq came upon a group of Iraqi jailers beating what appeared to be prisoners. This was discovered in an enclosure near the Iraqi Interior Ministry in Baghdad on June 29, Iraq's first day as a newly-sovereign country.

The soldiers moved in and disarmed the jailers, whose victims included a 14-year-old boy who was covered in bruises and welts, and dozens of others who had been deprived of food and water for three days, according to the article. Torture devices of varying description were found in a nearby building.

Unfortunately, due to "strategic" concerns, the soldiers were instructed to return the prisoners to their jailers and withdraw.

It was a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. The options were to either override the Iraqi officials' newly-granted autonomy, which would naturally draw criticism, or to leave the situation alone and "stand down," which is what they did, to the infuriation of the soldiers on the scene.

Politics and "strategery" have hamstrung operations in Iraq. At this point, figuring out who was the first to "lie" about Iraq's WMD capability is futile, and we ought to be focusing attention on getting our work done effectively. When every move is inflated to the level of election-year politics, how is anyone supposed to actually accomplish anything?

Which brings me to the accusation by retired General Wesley Clark that Bush's announcement of global troop realignment at the VFW convention the other day was "politically motivated." Clark cites the timing.

Anything that happens in an election year can be labelled "politically motivated." It's an election year. There isn't anything anyone can do to change that. It's not as if someone can just "hop out" for a second and go back to the real world. It's an election year, and it will be until November.

I can feel myself getting worked up into a real malaise right now. There's just too much stupidity going on in the world and I don't feel like tackling it at the moment. Maybe sometime after I've had a proper night's sleep.

-30-

Salemonz and I went and saw Alien vs. Predator on Saturday. It was everything I knew - and was afraid - it would be.

As I said before, the first Alien was almost an art-house take on the slasher genre... it became a sci-fi classic just because it happened to be set in outer space. Aliens, James Cameron's action-themed sequel, took the good design and ideas behind Alien and fleshed them out, adding the hive aspect, and creating a Vietnam war metaphor. Alien³ was a bit of a mess, but until David Fincher (of Fight Club and Se7en distinction) decides he wants to talk about it, we won't know exactly why.

You could tell something was going wrong with the franchise when Alien: Resurrection came out a few years back. There still were the great ideas from the original two movies there, but something was missing: the movie added almost nothing to the Alien mythology - aside from the cloned Ripley's infusion of alien abilities, which was incredibly lame.

And considering this downward slope, Alien vs. Predator is not a surprise at all. There isn't much plot to go into. Basically, a present-day team of "experts," who, for some reason, travel to the "remotest place on Earth" with a squad of heavily-armed bodyguards, are investigating a heat plume that's appeared underground in Antarctica. Turns out, it's an ancient pyramid.

Pyramids, the movie informs us through character-based narration (a trick of the cheapest order in the movie business), were constructed by ancient civilizations like the Aztecs and Egyptians with the help of Predators, who showed up every hundred years or so to hunt for aliens in the vast structures. The Aztecs and others were happy to sacrifice a few members of their tribe to provide the host bodies neccessary for alien gestation. We're treated to a great "flashback" scene showing epic battles between hordes of computer-generated beasties during the tale, as one of the experts reads hieroglyphics off one of the walls in the Antarctic pyramid.

The team finds themselves, predictably, in terrible danger as the battle between species begins. And the audience, meanwhile, finds themselves in terrible danger of being cliche'd to death as the movie rips off every contrivance ever contrived in the action/sci-fi genre.

The pyramid, inexplicably, "reconfigures" itself every ten minutes once the power's turned back on. Has anyone seen The Cube? This is an easy way for the director to have random trap doors open and swallow less-interesting characters (none of whom are very interesting to begin with).  Just as this process begins happening, one of the Predators who have come to impale aliens leaps over the team, who fire at it and scream. Afterwards, they don't seem to remember that large, heavily-armed creatures are roaming the hallways with them.

Then there's the never-ending cliffhanger syndrome the movie falls prey (heh, no pun intended) to towards the end. Doors closing, aliens pursuing, explosions incinerating everything in sight -- just as the characters are making their escape. I'm not sure how anyone could outrun a pissed-off queen alien when it has legs that are around 50 feet long, but hey! It's cinema! People will love it!

The cheap shots are plentiful and predictable. Early on, one scientist is snooping around the abandoned whaling village (don't ask) that happens to lie directly over the ancient pyramid when he hears little scrabbling noises from the dark, dusty corner of a dark, dusty room. He freaks out, sort of as if he knew one of those face-hugging alien embryos were after him. As it turns out, the noise is coming from a penguin.

The dialogue is forced and uninspired. The plot -- well, there isn't much of one. However, the visuals are great. The aliens and predators are cool. Things blow up. Aliens impale things on their tails. One of the predators takes off his mask.

All things considered, I guess I got what I paid for. Just makes me glad to know I went to the matinee.

-30-

I was reading through a "Weekender" magazine just a couple minutes ago, and noticed a photo from Aliens vs. Predator. Apparently, the movie wasn't given a pre-release to reviewers, so all they could say was that the movie is rated PG-13 "For Violence."

What? What's going on here? PG-13? This is an Aliens movie, for crying out loud! People are supposed to get ripped to glistening shreds in these movies! There probably won't even be a future state governor in the cast.

Seriously though, what is going on? Has the violence level been curbed, or have our ratings shifted as violence becomes more pervasive and accepted by society?

When I think "PG-13," I think of movies with Ben Affleck in them. Man, I hate that guy. It's the kind of movie you take your girlfriend to, and help her "cover her eyes" at the "scary parts."

Then there's got to be the 25% of the show devoted to some ridiculous love-triangle, which either features Ben Affleck or that Heath-whatever kid and some doe-eyed starlet with the gorgeous gams and spunky personality.

Maybe it's okay to throw buckets of gore around the screen as long as it's inserted into the picture with the magic of computer graphics. I can just see the George Lucas version of Scarface - it'll be PG-13, but only because the chainsaw they use to hack that guy up in the bathroom will be CGI.

Alien was good because it wasn't a sci-fi movie, really. It was a very well done slasher flick that happened to take place in a spaceship. Really, it's probably one of the most polished horror movies around. It's good because it's atmospheric and mysterious -- you don't see much of the alien until the very end. Up to that point, all you see is glistening fangs, a weird tail, and a bit of a head that has no eyes... completely alien, and enough to scare the bejeezus out of you.

Now, of course, it's a franchise, and action figures must be sold. Which may in part explain the PG-13 rating. Thanks to the magic of special effects, we're probably going to see a lot of both Alien and Predator, and the whole mysterious foriegnness of both will be notably absent.

Of course, I'm going to go see the damn thing. I have to. The aliens are so damn cool.

-30-

Ahh, just kiddin'.  I figured that was worth a couple of hits.

Truth be told, I haven't really been doing much politicking lately. There just isn't anything interesting going on. The election is coming up, and someone's going to win it, and very probably there won't be any perceptible change in my little world.

If Kerry wins, the "war on terror" and the war in Iraq aren't going to magically end. The Democratic Party's nominee is hoping to expand the military by 40,000 troops! That's four divisions. There are ten divisions in the Army at the moment (plus garrison and detached units all over the place). That's a pretty significant jump in recruiting. Michael Moore's going to have to go after old John, too, ain't he? I mean, it's not as if rich white kids are just going to start signing up if Bush leaves office. It'll still be poor, racial minorities who join the military and die for their country. Which is the way it's always been.

What's left to do today... well, I have a Sports Section to fill, a car payment to make, and a mess of beer to consume. Have a great weekend, everyone... this is Specialist Ian Boudreau signing off.

I had fun with this column. See what you think.

-30-

Saddam Hussein – a poor, broken old man, behind the bars of an unjust American prison, away from the country he once ruled with an iron fist, reduced to gardening and yoga.

The poor guy. The trial pictures make him look like Stalin’s rambunctious old uncle… you know, the kind that would slip you presents under the noses of your parents, the guy who introduced you to beer, and who runs a barbershop in his hometown in Prince Edward Island.

In the midst of the pre-election rabble rousings, I figured, having just read a biography of Uncle Saddie, that I’d remind my, uh, readership about a few fun facts about Iraq’s Ex-Dictator-in-Chief.

First off, booting Saddam out of Iraq wasn’t an idea that Bush (or even Bush Sr.) hatched up in their Texan cowboy brains. We’ve been after this guy for decades. As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once bemoaned during the Iran-Iraq War, “It’s a pity they both can’t lose.”

Anyway, Iraq received U.S. armaments only because they were the lesser of two evils: the other being the fanatical new regime of the ayatollahs in Iran. And as I’ve said before, the whole conflict, plus the Iran Contra fiasco, needs to be understood in terms of the Cold War – i.e., Iran and Iraq both were pawns in the power play for the Middle East by both the United States and the USSR.

Immediately after the first Gulf War, George H.W. Bush signed a “finding,” which essentially authorized the CIA to use “any means necessary, including deadly force” to oust Saddam from power. Upon election in ’92, Clinton re-authorized the same finding.

As far as this “no weapons of mass destruction” goes, it’s not as if the decision to go after Saddam’s WMD was an uneducated guess. Saddam’s been stockpiling the buggers since the ‘70s, and a conservative estimate in 2002 was that he’d have a nuclear weapon within five years. This is, of course, thanks to the reactors sold to him by the French.

Chemical and biological weapons were in development in Iraq for years as well. German contractors built six chemical “research” plants (ostensibly for the development of fertilizers and pesticides) that were used to make mortars and artillery shells equipped with VX, mustard gas, and a variety of other nerve, blister, and asphyxiation agents.

I could be making this all up. Just ask the Kurds and Iranians. I think they’ll corroborate.

Harboring terrorists? No links to al-Qaeda? Ok, well, Sabri al-Banna (better known to the world as Abu Nidal, Google the words “Vienna Rome terrorist bombing” for more info) found sanctuary in Baghdad for years – as long as Saddam thought he could be useful. Several assassinations of former Iraqi leaders in England were attributed to both Abu Nidal and Saddam.

The People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who were condemned by both the USSR and China (neither of whom has outstanding human-rights records), and kicked out of Palestine and Syria, received a headquarters in downtown Baghdad courtesy of everyone’s favorite Stalin impersonator.

Then there’s the torture issue. I’m not going to get into Abu Ghraib and the U.S.’s misdeeds there (although I’m not convinced by any stretch of the imagination that “sodomy of little children” was authorized by Department of Defense). Let it be known that Saddam was known for brutality, and that people who spoke up against the regime were routinely tortured, mutilated, and often time summarily executed. Hands were severed, the soles of feet were beaten with hoses, and electrical probes used in ways too terrible to list here.

Saddam’s not an Islamic idealist or fundamentalist himself. He’s just an opportunist and survivalist. If there were bookies taking bets on whether or not Saddam had weapons of mass destruction in development before the war, I’m sure it would be tough to find good odds against it.

Anyway, whichever side of the political fence you might find yourself on, it’s good to remember a few things about former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

-30-

Friday night I volunteered to be the Designated Driver for two guys in the barracks who wanted to hit up Phoenix Hill. One of them, Tim, had just gotten in from my old unit, the 2^nd Infantry Division in Korea. Nowadays, I’m always up for a drive in the Road Shark, so I was more than happy to drive them up to the club. 

Both of them were a bit in the bag already. The other fellow – who I’m having trouble coming up with a name for, other than “numb-nuts” – was most of the way through a handle of Captain Morgan, and was continually talking about the tricks and schemes he’d learned from Maxim Magazine to pick up “hot chicks” with. 

Numb-nuts (I’m just going to go with this) is what I’d consider the prime club specimen. He’s built like a football player and has an Italian complexion. Unfortunately, he’s about as clever as a sack of hammers. 

At any rate, Numb-nuts claimed that he could snag any woman at the bar, and made several statements during the ride up that illustrated his distaste for overweight females. 

“They’re revolting,” he said. “I wouldn’t touch one.” 

The rest of the ride was spent devising “cover stories” to use on unsuspecting female clientele at Phoenix Hill. Numb-nuts had decided that he was a first-round draft pick for the Carolina Panthers, and had worn a football jersey as evidence. Tim seemed to like this idea. 

Once we got into the bar, I followed the two around, somewhat curious as to how they were going to set about seducing the crème-de-la-crème of the Louisville bar scene. Maybe, I thought, I could learn something from these two. 

I was wrong. 

Numb-nuts’ strategy was to spot a pair or threesome of ladies and yell, “Hey! Hey! Hey!” Once he had their attention, he’d motion them over to the table we were standing at, which was near the center of Phoenix Hill’s upstairs conservatory area. Sometimes, the women would come over, and Numb-nuts, football jersey and all, would say, “My friend here wants to talk to you,” and pass them off onto Tim. 

Tim would speak with them for a couple minutes, and then they’d invariably leave. 

On one occasion, the dynamic duo decided that our cover story would be that we’re in the Army (which is true) and that we’re going to be sent to Iraq this week (which is patently false). I had been sipping water and smoking cigarettes at my side of the table for a while now, and this idea, aside from being morally repugnant, also struck me as incredibly bad. 

Which it was. 

The two ladies they first tried this line on turned out to be graduate students at the University of Louisville. They were spectacularly unimpressed by Numb-nuts’ line. 

“Why would you be telling us this right now?” one asked with a sneer. “You must think we’re really dumb,” said the other. 

Numb-nuts was at a loss for words, fortunately.
The two women obliged Tim and his compatriot with conversation for a little while, while I put my face in my hands and desperately wished for it to be over. Eventually, I lit another Camel and listened to the mediocre rock cover band thrashing around on the stage. 

One of the women eventually posed a pointed question to me. 

“Why do you associate yourself with people like these?” she asked from across the table. 

I shrugged. “That’s a good question. I’m just the driver tonight.” 

“Are you really in the service?”
I produced my Army ID card, and she seemed surprised to learn that any part of Numb-nuts’ story was actually true. 

The rest of the night progressed in similar fashion. Numb-nuts would holler, and Tim would try to back him up. Numb-nuts eventually ran into trouble identifying attractive women. Apparently, he lost the ability to discern beauty unless it was under five feet away from him. This would cause serious problems for him later on. 

During the evening, one of the bands’ frontman informed us that Rick James (of “Superfreak” and now Dave Chappelle fame) had died. He urged us all to raise our glasses and repeat with him, “I’m Rick James, biatch!” I wasn’t sure that it was a fitting tribute. 

Numb-nuts found himself a friend later on, as the three of us were leaning on the main bar. She was – how shall I say this – of the variety that Numb-nuts had been disparaging of during the car ride up to Louisville. He struck up a conversation, and when Tim and I said we were heading upstairs fifteen minutes later, he said he would stay where he was. 

Tim and I wandered through Phoenix Hill’s many passageways, bars, and performance areas for over an hour, trading stories from Korea and watching unselfconscious girls in schoolgirl uniforms dance seductively in cages. Eventually, we decided it was quitting time, and set out to find old Numb-nuts. 

We found him just where we’d left him. I saw the garish football jersey from across the crowded downstairs bar, and then I spotted the faux cowboy hat that his large new friend had been wearing. They were lip-locked, playing tonsil hockey, right there at the bar in the middle of the room. 

Tim and I slunk over to a nearby table, covering our mouths to keep from howling with laughter. 

After a while, we decided to collect the drunken bastard and take him home. Tim went over and informed him that we were leaving in five minutes, with or without him. He seemed to indicate that this was fine, he’d be right out. 

We waited by the exit for a good ten. “We can’t go home without him,” Tim said. I agreed, and Tim went back in to convince Numb-nuts to come with us. 

He came back to the exit shortly, and said, “Let’s go.” We walked outside and I asked him what had happened. 

“He kept saying, ‘I’m good, man,’” Tim said. “Then the fat chick said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of him.’” 

I hooted. “Well, let’s hit the road.”

The next day, it turned out that Numb-nuts had eventually made it home, and had begun spreading the rumor that he had gone home with two women that night. To Tim and me, he said, “I TOTALLY didn’t sleep with her, dudes.” 

Lesson learned – stick with what works, Ian. 

-30-

This morning we had the distinct pleasure of participating in a Law Enforcement Command Battalion run, led by our intrepid new commander, the Fort Knox Provost Marshall. And when I say "distinct pleasure," I mean "unfortunate obligation."

I'm definitely not a world-class runner. There isn't a Kenyan gene to be found in my body. But I'll hang in there till the end in these slow-paced formation runs.

Part of any formation run in the Army is cadence. Some sergeant will hop out of formation and holler some crazy "left-right-left" song, which the formation will duly repeat. I'm not exactly sure why, but this seems to work to keep people going.

Cadences always remind me of my first runs in Basic Training. I remember getting up before any civilized person is supposed to, and herded into formation in the Delta 4/38 company area downstairs. We'd head out into the still-dark Georgia morning and run around the ups and downs of Sand Hill.

C-one-thirty rollin' down the strip
Sixty-four troopers on a one-way trip.

We still sang cadences during PT in advanced training at Fort Meade, Maryland, but they were cleaned up a bit due to the fact that Fort Meade was co-ed. At Benning, we didn't worry much about the language or subject matter in cadences, since we were all guys. The only time the drill sergeants made us watch our mouths was if one of the company officers was around. There a few amusing replacements for dirty words or phrases, but the overall effect of "cleaned-up" cadences was to make them lame.

Down by the river
We took a little walk
Ran into the Marine Corps
We had a little talk

In Korea, we didn't sing cadence as much, but when we did, good old Sgt. K made sure they were amusing, particularly when we were headed for Radar Hill, a brutal mountain outside Camp Red Cloud that had about three miles of switchbacks cut into its side. It was named for the ROK radar station situated on top.

Up jumped the monkey from the coconut grove
He was a mean mama-jama, I could tell by his clothes.

My buddy Mac, having been through Army Airborne school, was also full of Benning-style cadence. A lot of cadences deal with Airborne and Ranger qualified soldiers, and everyone sings them, whether they're Airborne, Ranger or not. Usually they're not.

Momma told Susie not to go downtown
Too many soldiers hangin' around.
Susie got mad, and she went anyway
Didn't come home till the very next day.

Anyway, as I huffed and puffed around the parade field this morning with the battalion, I couldn't help but think about how many different places I'd been singing these ridiculous songs with groups of other sweaty people in gray PT uniforms. I'm sure there'll be many more.

-30-

Well, my first commentary as the new sports editor ran in the Turret yesterday. As I said in the column, I'm not an avid sports freak, but I do have a healthy "love of the game."

Anyway, see what you think. Bylines are fun. I live for the little bastards.

-30-

I guess one of these days I’m just going to have to plead guilty to being one of those unsavory “neoconservative” types. I have my doubts about whether certain people who throw the term around even know what the word means, but that’s neither here nor there. Stopping by National Review this morning, a found this article, and found myself nodding along as I read Mark Goldblatt’s rather pointed criticism of mainstream Bush Bashing. To wit:

Yet Bush's stated rationale for going to war is universally sneered at by Bush bashers. On what basis? Typically, the basher will simply insist on his own ability to peer into Bush's soul to discern the "true" motive — dismissing as irrelevant Bush's specific justifications. And the "true" motive is always the same: Bush invaded Iraq to line the pockets of his corporate capitalist cronies.

It sure is a good thing we’ve got folks around who are perceptive enough to sniff out the lies and conspiracies going on, huh? The better news is that in the long run, cooler heads usually prevail, and the histrionics demonstrated on a daily basis now will someday be a thing of the past.

I may have mentioned this before, but I’ve been reading Saddam: King of Terror for the past couple days. Quite a story. Of particular interest is Saddam’s almost obsessive drive during the late 1970s to get his hands on biological and chemical weapons, as well as nuclear devices (which, surprisingly enough, were sold to him without a second thought by your friend and mine, Jacques Chiraq of France). I’ll have to post some “interesting facts” about our poor old imprisoned gardener one of these days.

We’re heading back down to the News-Enterprise later this morning to discuss, once again, a major design overhaul for the Turret, which, while attractive, is a bit staid. The NE’s design monkey has some great ideas, and I think we’ll have a much more modern-looking paper in the next month or so.

Over and out.

-30-

I've been busily trying to adapt to this new role as the Turret sports editor. There have been several new skills to learn (like, who to email with what and how much cheating room I have with layout) and some rusty skills to take out and dust off again (like laying out pages on dummy sheets). It's been interesting, so far, but since the job landed me a press pass to the Tyson fight this past weekend, I really can't complain.

Wednesdays we normally all go down to Elizabethtown to finish up the paper with the News Enterprise's composition staff. We wear civilain clothes. We go out for lunch. However, since I am the luckiest man alive, I wound up pulling MASA (ammunition storage area) guard detail tomorrow, so instead, I get to get up at the crack of dawn, draw a weapon, and sit in a guard shack all day, until the night-shift drill sergeants gets his recruit detail lined up, briefed, armed, and transported out to the site. Great. At least I bought a couple new books yesterday: "Saddam: King of Terror" by Con Coughlin and a synopsis of North Korea. So at least I'll have something to read.

Salemonz pointed this out to me today: